The Exorcist

  When he’d finished, Klein sat and talked to Regan, observing her demeanor, and then returned to his office and started to write a prescription. “She appears to have a hyperkinetic behavior disorder,” he said to Chris as he wrote.

  “A what?”

  “A disorder of the nerves. At least we think it is. We don’t know yet exactly how it works, but it’s often seen in early adolescence. She shows all the symptoms: the hyperactivity; the temper; her performance in math.”

  “Yeah, the math. Why the math?”

  “It affects concentration.” He ripped the prescription from the small blue pad and handed it over to Chris. He said, “This is for Ritalin.”

  “What?”

  “Methylphenidate.”

  “Oh, yeah, that.”

  “Ten milligrams, twice a day. I’d recommend one at eight A.M., and the other at two in the afternoon.”

  Chris was eyeing the prescription.

  “What is it? A tranquilizer?”

  “A stimulant.”

  “A stimulant? She’s higher’n a kite right now!”

  “Her condition isn’t quite what it seems,” explained Klein. “It’s a form of overcompensation, an overreaction to depression.”

  “Depression?”

  Klein nodded.

  “Depression,” Chris repeated, looking aside and at the floor in thought.

  “Well, you mentioned her father.”

  Chris looked up. “Do you think I should take her to see a psychiatrist, Doc?”

  “Oh, no. I’d wait and see what happens with the Ritalin. I really think that’s the answer. Let’s wait two or three weeks.”

  “So you think it’s all nerves.”

  “I suspect so.”

  “And those lies she’s been telling? This’ll stop it?”

  His answer puzzled her. He asked her if she’d ever known Regan to swear or use obscenities.

  “Funny question. No, never.”

  “Well, you see, that’s quite similar to things like her lying—uncharacteristic, from what you tell me, but in certain disorders of the nerves it can—”

  “Wait a minute, hold it,” Chris interrupted. “Where’d you ever get the notion that she uses obscenities? I mean, is that what you were saying or did I misunderstand?”

  Klein eyed her curiously for a moment before cautiously venturing, “Yes, I’d say that she uses obscenities. Weren’t you aware of it?”

  “I’m still not aware of it! What are you talking about?”

  “Well, she let loose quite a string while I was examining her, Mrs. MacNeil.”

  “Are you kidding me, Doc? Such as what?”

  Klein looked evasive. “Well, let’s just say that her vocabulary’s rather extensive.”

  “Well, like what? I mean, give me an example!”

  Klein shrugged.

  “You mean ‘shit’? Or ‘fuck’?”

  Klein relaxed. “Yes, she used those words,” he said.

  “And what else did she say? I mean, specifically.”

  “Well, specifically, Mrs. MacNeil, she advised me to keep my goddamn fingers away from her cunt.”

  Chris gasped with shock. “She used those words?”

  “Well, it isn’t unusual, Mrs. MacNeil, and I really wouldn’t worry about it at all. As I said, it’s just a part of the syndrome.”

  Looking down at her shoes, Chris was shaking her head. “It’s just so hard to believe,” she said softly.

  “Look, I doubt that she even understood what she was saying.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” Chris murmured. “That could be.”

  “Try the Ritalin,” Klein advised her, “and we’ll see what develops. And I’d like to take a look at her again in two weeks.”

  He consulted a calendar pad on his desk. “Let’s see; let’s make it Wednesday the twenty-seventh. Would that be convenient?”

  “Yeah, okay.” Subdued and morose, Chris got up from her chair, took the prescription and crumpled it into a pocket of her coat. “Yeah, sure. The twenty-seventh would be fine.”

  “I’m quite a big fan of yours,” Klein told her as he opened the door leading into the hall.

  An index fingertip pressed to her lip, head lowered, Chris paused in the doorway, preoccupied. She glanced up at the doctor. “You don’t think a psychiatrist, Doc?”

  “I don’t know. But the best explanation is always the simplest one. Let’s wait. Let’s wait and see.” Klein smiled encouragingly. He said, “Try not to worry.”

  “How?”

  As Chris was driving her home, Regan asked what the doctor had told her.

  “He just said you’re nervous.”

  “That’s all?”

  “That’s all.”

  Chris had decided not to talk about her language.

  Burke. She must have picked it up from Burke.

  But later Chris spoke to Sharon about it, asking if she’d ever heard Regan use that kind of obscenity.

  “Oh, my God, no,” said Sharon, slightly taken aback. “No, never. I mean, not even lately. But you know, I think her art teacher made some remark about it.”

  “You mean recently, Sharon?”

  “Last week. But that woman’s so prissy. I just figured maybe Regan said ‘damn’ or ‘crap.’ You know, something like that.”

  “Oh, by the way, have you been talking to Rags about religion, Shar?”

  Sharon flushed.

  “Well, a little; that’s all. I mean, it’s hard to avoid. Chris, she asks so many questions, and—well…” She gave a helpless little shrug. “It’s just hard. I mean, how do I answer without telling what I think is a great big lie?”

  “Give her multiple choice.”

  In the days that preceded her scheduled dinner party, Chris was extremely diligent in seeing that Regan took her dosage of Ritalin. By the night of the party, however, she had failed to observe any noticeable improvement. There were subtle signs, in fact, of a gradual deterioration: increased forgetfulness; untidiness; and one complaint of nausea. As for attention-getting tactics, although the familiar ones failed to recur, there appeared to be a new one: reports of a foul, unpleasant “smell” in Regan’s bedroom. At Regan’s insistence, Chris took a whiff one day and smelled nothing.

  “You don’t smell it?” Regan asked, looking puzzled.

  “You mean, you smell it right now?”

  “Oh, well, sure!”

  “What’s it smell like, baby?”

  Regan had wrinkled her nose. “Well, like something burny.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  Chris had sniffed yet again, this time more deeply.

  “Don’t you smell it?”

  “Oh, yeah, now I do. Why don’t we open up the window for a while, get some air in.”

  In fact, Chris had smelled nothing, but had made up her mind that she would temporize, at least until the appointment with the doctor. She was also preoccupied with a number of other concerns. One was arrangements for the dinner party. Another had to do with the script. Although she was still enthusiastic about the prospect of directing, a natural caution had prevented her from making a prompt decision. In the meantime, her agent was calling her daily. She told him that she’d given the script to Dennings for his opinion, and said she hoped he was reading and not consuming it.

  The third, and the most important, of Chris’s concerns was the failure of two financial ventures: a purchase of convertible debentures through the use of prepaid interest; and an investment in an oil-drilling project in southern Libya. Both had been entered upon for the sheltering of income that would have been subject to enormous taxation. But something even worse had developed: the wells had come up dry and rocketing interest rates had prompted a sell-off in bonds. These were the problems that her gloomy business manager flew into town to discuss. He arrived on Thursday. Chris had him charting and explaining through Friday, when at last she decided on a course of action that the manager thought wise, though he frowned when she then brought up the subject of buying a F
errari.

  “You mean, a new one?”

  “Why not? You know, I drove one in a picture once. If we write to the factory, maybe, and remind them, it could be they might give us a deal. Don’t you think?”

  The manager didn’t. And cautioned that he thought such a purchase improvident.

  “Ben, I made over eight hundred thou last year and you’re telling me I can’t buy a freaking car! Don’t you think that’s ridiculous? Where’d the money all go?”

  He reminded her that most of her money was in shelters. Then he listed the various drains on her income: federal income tax; her state tax; estimated tax on future income; property taxes; commissions to her agent and to him and to her publicist that added up to twenty percent of her income; another one and a quarter percent to the Motion Picture Welfare Fund; an outlay for wardrobe in tune with the fashion; salaries to Willie and Karl and Sharon and the caretaker of the Los Angeles home; various travel costs; and, finally, her monthly expenses.

  “Will you do another picture this year?” he asked her.

  Chris shrugged. “I dunno. Do I have to?”

  “Yes, I think perhaps you should.”

  Elbows propped on her knees, Chris held her wistful face cupped in both hands as, eyeing the business manager moodily, she asked him, “What about a Honda?”

  He made no reply.

  Later that evening, Chris tried to put all of her worries aside; tried to keep herself busy with making preparations for the next night’s party.

  “Let’s serve the curry buffet instead of sit-down,” she told Willie and Karl. “We can set up a table at the end of the living room. Right?”

  “Very good, Madam,” Karl answered quickly.

  “So what do you think, Willie? A fresh fruit salad for dessert?”

  “Yes, excellent, Madam!” Karl answered.

  “Thanks, Willie.”

  She’d invited an interesting mixture. In addition to Burke (“Show up sober, goddammit!”) and the youngish director of the second unit, she expected a senator (and wife); an Apollo astronaut (and wife); two Jesuits from Georgetown; her next-door neighbors; and Mary Jo Perrin and Ellen Cleary.

  Mary Jo Perrin was a plump and gray-headed Washington psychic. Chris had met her at the White House dinner and liked her immensely. She’d expected to find her austere and forbidding, but “You’re not like that at all!” she’d been able to tell her; instead, she was bubbly-warm and unpretentious. Ellen Cleary was a middle-aged State Department secretary who’d worked in the U. S. Embassy in Moscow when Chris toured Russia. She had gone to considerable effort and trouble to rescue Chris from a number of difficulties and encumbrances encountered in the course of her travels, not the least of which had been caused by the redheaded actress’s outspokenness. Chris had remembered her with affection over the years, and had looked her up on coming to Washington.

  “Hey, Shar, which priests are coming?”

  “I’m not sure yet. I invited the president and the dean of the college, but I think that the president’s sending an alternate. His secretary called me late this morning and said that he might have to go out of town.”

  “Who’s he sending?” Chris asked with guarded interest.

  “Let me see.” Sharon rummaged through scraps of notes. “Yes, here it is. It’s his assistant, Father Joseph Dyer.”

  “Oh.”

  Chris seemed disappointed.

  “Where’s Rags?” she asked.

  “Downstairs.”

  “You know, maybe you should start to keep your typewriter there; don’t you think? I mean, that way you can watch her when you’re typing. Okay? I don’t like her being alone so much.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Okay, later. Go on home, Shar. Meditate. Play with horses.”

  The planning and preparations at an end, Chris again found herself turning worried thoughts toward Regan. She tried to watch television. Could not concentrate. Felt uneasy. There was a strangeness in the house. Like settling stillness. Weighted dust.

  By midnight, all in the house were asleep.

  There were no disturbances. That night.

  Chapter Four

  She greeted her guests in a lime-green hostess costume with long, belled sleeves and pants. Her shoes were comfortable and reflected her hope for the evening.

  The first to arrive was the celebrity psychic, Mary Jo Perrin, who came with Robert, her teenage son, and the last was pink-faced Father Dyer. He was young and diminutive, with mischievous eyes behind steel-rimmed spectacles. At the door, he apologized for his lateness. “Couldn’t find the right necktie,” he told Chris expressionlessly. She stared at him blankly, then burst into laughter. Her daylong depression began to lift.

  The drinks did their work. By a quarter to ten, all were scattered about the living room eating their dinners in vibrant knots of conversation.

  Chris filled her plate from the steaming buffet and scanned the room for Mrs. Perrin. There. On a sofa with Father Wagner, the Jesuit dean. Chris had spoken to him briefly. He had a bald, freckled scalp and a dry, soft manner. Chris drifted to the sofa and folded to the floor in front of the coffee table as the psychic chuckled with mirth.

  “Oh, come on, Mary Jo!” the dean said, smiling, as he lifted a forkful of curry to his mouth.

  “Yeah, come on,” echoed Chris.

  “Oh, hi! Great curry!” said the dean.

  “Not too hot?”

  “Not at all; it’s just right. Mary Jo has been telling me there used to be a Jesuit who was also a medium.”

  “And he doesn’t believe me!” said the psychic with mirth.

  “Ah, distinguo,” corrected the dean. “I just said it was hard to believe.”

  “You mean medium medium?” asked Chris.

  “Why, of course,” said Mary Jo. “Why, he even used to levitate!”

  “Oh, I do that every morning,” said the Jesuit quietly.

  “You mean he held séances?” Chris asked Mrs. Perrin.

  “Well, yes,” she answered. “He was very, very famous in the nineteenth century. In fact, he was probably the only spiritualist of his time who wasn’t ever convicted of fraud.”

  “As I said, he wasn’t a Jesuit,” commented the dean.

  “Oh, my, but was he ever!” The psychic laughed. “When he turned twenty-two, he joined the Jesuits and promised not to work anymore as a medium, but they threw him out of France”—she laughed even harder—“right after a séance that he held at the Tuileries. Do you know what he did? In the middle of the séance he told the empress she was about to be touched by the hands of a spirit child who was about to fully materialize, and when they suddenly turned all of the lights on”—she guffawed—“they caught him sitting with his naked foot on the empress’s arm! Now, can you imagine?”

  The Jesuit was smiling as he set down his plate. “Don’t come looking for discounts any more on indulgences, Mary Jo.”

  “Oh, come on, every family’s got one black sheep.”

  “We were pushing our quota with the Medici popes.”

  “Y’know, I had an experience once,” Chris began.

  But the dean interrupted. “Are you making this a matter of confession?”

  Chris smiled and said, “No, I’m not a Catholic.”

  “Oh, well, neither are the Jesuits,” Perrin teased with a smile.

  “Dominican slander,” retorted the dean. Then to Chris he said, “I’m sorry, my dear. You were saying?”

  “Well, just that I thought I saw somebody levitate once. In Bhutan.”

  She recounted the story.

  “Do you think that’s possible?” she ended. “I mean, really?”

  “Who knows?” replied the Jesuit dean. He shrugged. “Who knows what gravity is. Or matter, when it comes to that.”

  “Would you like my opinion?” interjected Mrs. Perrin.

  “No, Mary Jo,” the dean told her. “I’ve taken a vow of poverty.”

  “So have I,” Chris muttered.

  “Wha
t was that?” asked the dean, leaning forward.

  “Oh, nothing. Say, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. Do you know that little cottage that’s back of the church over there?” She pointed in the general direction.

  “Holy Trinity?” he asked.

  “Yes, right. Well, what goes on in there?”

  “Oh, well, that’s where they say Black Mass,” said Mrs. Perrin.

  “Black who?”

  “Black Mass.”

  “What’s that?”

  “She’s kidding,” said the dean.

  “Yes, I know,” said Chris, “but I’m dumb. I mean, what’s a Black Mass?”

  “Oh, well, basically, it’s a travesty on the Catholic Mass,” explained the dean. “It’s connected to devil worship.”

  “Good grief! You mean, there really is such a thing?”

  “I really couldn’t say. Although I heard a statistic once about something like possibly fifty thousand Black Masses being said every year in the city of Paris.”

  “You mean now?” marveled Chris.

  “It’s just something I heard.”

  “Yes, of course, from the Jesuit secret service,” twitted Mrs. Perrin.

  “Not at all,” said the dean. “My voices told me.”

  The women laughed.

  “You know, back in L.A.,” mentioned Chris, “you hear an awful lot of stories about witch cults being around. I’ve often wondered if it’s true.”

  “Well, as I said, I wouldn’t know,” said the dean. “But I’ll tell you who might—Joe Dyer. Where’s Joe?”

  The dean looked around.

  “Oh, over there,” he said, nodding toward the other priest, who was standing at the buffet with his back to them, heaping a second helping onto his plate. “Hey, Joe?”

  The young priest turned, his face impassive. “You called, great dean?”

  The dean beckoned with his fingers.

  “Just a second,” answered Dyer, turning back to resume his attack on the curry and salad.

  “That’s the only leprechaun in the priesthood,” said the dean with fondness. He sipped at his wine. “They had a couple of cases of desecration in Holy Trinity last week, and Joe said something about one of them reminding him of some things they used to do at Black Mass, so I expect he knows something about the subject.”